The UN rights council on Monday ordered an "urgent inquiry" into violations and abuses in the Sudanese city of El-Obeid, warning of the looming risk of "large-scale atrocities".
A strategic hub in the southern Kordofan region, El-Obeid has been encircled for months by the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has been fighting Sudan's army since April 2023.
In a resolution adopted by consensus, the 47-member council voiced "deep concern about the imminent risk of large-scale atrocities by the (RSF)... faced by hundreds of thousands of civilians, including children and internally displaced persons in and around El-Obeid".
The resolution, which passed after the council held an urgent debate on the situation on Friday, also condemned "reports of dozens of drone strikes on El-Obeid in the last two weeks, including on hospitals and health facilities".
It also decried "widespread use of rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence", and voiced "alarm at reports of the use of starvation as a method of warfare".
Presenting the resolution on behalf of a number of countries, Britain's human rights ambassador in Geneva Eleanor Sanders told the council that it was "not enough to express shock and concern".
"We must take concrete action to support accountability for these crimes."
- 'Red alert' -
El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, sits on a key route linking RSF-held areas in the western Darfur region to army-controlled regions in the east.
A city of half a million people that hosts nearly 100,000 refugees displaced by the civil war, El-Obeid has, in recent weeks, faced its most intense RSF attacks yet.
The UN has voiced fears that there could be a repeat in El-Obeid of atrocities committed during the RSF's October 2025 assault on the Sudanese city of El-Fasher.
The UN's independent fact-finding mission on Sudan concluded earlier this year that the siege and capture of El-Fasher bore "the hallmarks of genocide".
During Friday's debate, UN rights chief Volker Turk told the council that "the signs from El-Obeid are clear and unmistakable: another human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan".
Monday's text called on the existing fact-finding mission to conduct "an urgent inquiry into any violations and abuses of international... law and related to international crimes, allegedly committed in and around El-Obeid".
The investigators, it said, should provide an update to the rights council and the General Assembly in New York during their next sessions, both in September.
